The Indian Government is looking to frame a recycling policy for the lithium-ion batteries which used in electric vehicles while also offering tax sops to the recycling entities in the country. As per the norms laid down in Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), producers are now liable to collect used batteries which have achieved end of life.
“The proposed policy will have incentives for companies setting up recycling facilities and make it incumbent on producers to collect used batteries,” informed a senior government official.
An inter-ministerial steering committee had advanced that the environment, forest and climate change ministry should prepare a recycling policy and also work on extended producer responsibility.
The valuable materials used in each of these batteries include aluminium, nickel, cobalt and lithium which are finite in nature and are largely imported from other countries. Due to high dependency on imports for the materials, the government is keen on recycling and recovering these batteries when they reach end of life for optimal usage.
The move is an after-effect of the government’s hard push to the electric vehicle under the National Electric Mobility Mission Plan 2020. It is expected that by 2020, there will be 6-7 million of electric vehicles on road and 30 per cent of the entire fleet of vehicles of the country will be electric by 2030.
According to EPR, any producer of Li-ion batteries is liable to ensure environmentally sound management of these batteries by a take-back system wherein end-users are incentivised for a lump sum amount on the return of their battery or by exchanging the old ones for new batteries and set up collection centres for the batteries where they can be recycled.
As per a research by JMK, India’s Li-ion battery market is expected to rise up to 132 GWh by 2030 from 2.9 GWh in 2018, at a compound annual growth rate of 35.5 per cent.
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